Friday, November 20, 2009

Pierre Leduc et "le soleil d'afrique"

Pierre Leduc est venu au Canada en 1691 a bord "Le Soleil d'Afrique", un fregate navale de l'armee Francaise. It departed from La Rochelle on April 27, 1688 with fifty soldiers and 25 recruits. (Pierre Leduc was one of these? I've read that he was a <> - a cauldron maker, metal worker with the French army. We know that he was born in the little parish of St. Laurent(?), just outside Rouen, Haute-Normandie in 1645, to Pierre Leduc Sr. and Anne Martin. In 1688 when the soleil d'afrique set sail, he would have been 43. They reached Quebec on June 3, 1688. The commanding officer was one, Denonville. Bonaventure fits in there somewhere. He was another senior officer or the captain. I have also read somewhere that these soldiers were in the <>. I'm assuming this was the name of their regiment. I had read elsewhere that Pierre arrived in 1691, and that the soleil d'afrique first stopped at Louisbourg. So I'm not sure how this all fits together. But here you have the facts. Pierre Leduc married Catherine Fortin, daughter of Louis Fortin from Evreux (also in Haute Normandie), and they settled on a small farm on Ile-Perot (near Montreal). The freeway there apparently runs through where there farm used to be. Seven or eight generations later my great grandfather, Godfrey Leduc was born (c. 1901) at St. Timothee, near Salaberry de Valleyfield, in the Beauharnois region. He moved to Alberta in 1920 and became a farmer. His wife, Antoinette LaPalme, was from St. Dominique, Quebec (near St. Hyacinthe), and they married in c. 1929. They met while Antoinette was out visiting her LaPalme relatives in Wainwright, Alberta. Her parents were Josephe Lapalme and Euphemie Sinotte Loiselle of St. Dominique, Bagot, Quebec. I would like to find out more about the LaPalme and Sinotte family lines one day. How did they come to New France? Which part of France were they from? Etc.
I've recorded this so that I don't forget it. Hopefully you find some of it useful.

1 comment:

InTheRing said...

chaudronnier
compagnie de la mothe